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Software systems are the product of cognitive capitalism
Economics obviously has a significant impact on the production of software systems; it is the second chapter of my empirical software engineering book (humans, who are the primary influencers, are the first chapter; technically the Introduction is the first chapter, but you know what I mean).
I have never been happy with the chapter title “Economics”; it does not capture the spirit of what I want to talk about. Yes, a lot of the technical details covered are to be found in economics related books and courses, but how do these technical details fit into a grand scheme?
I was recently reading the slim volume “Dead Man Working” by Cederström and Fleming and the phrase cognitive capitalism jumped out at me; here was a term that fitted the ideas I had been trying to articulate. It took a couple of days before I took the plunge and changed the chapter title. In the current draft pdf little else has changed in the ex-Economics chapter (e.g., a bit of a rewrite of the first few lines), but now there is a coherent concept to mold the material around.
Signaling cognitive firepower as a software developer
Female Peacock mate selection is driven by the number of ‘eyes’ in the tail of the available males; the more the better. Supporting a large fancy tail is biologically expensive for the male and so tail quality is a reliable signal of reproductive fitness.
A university degree used to be a reliable signal of the cognitive firepower of its owner, a quality of interest to employers looking to fill jobs that required such firepower.
Some time ago, the UK government expressed the desire for 50% of the population to attend university (when I went to university the figure was around 5%). These days, a university degree is a signal of being desperate for a job to start paying off a large debt and having an IQ in the top 50% of the population. Dumbing down is the elephant in the room.
The idea behind shifting the payment of tuition fees from the state to the student, was that as paying customers students would somehow actively ensure that universities taught stuff that was useful for getting a job. In my day, lecturers laughed when students asked them about the relevance of the material being taught to working in industry; those that persisted had their motives for attending university questioned. I’m not sure that the material taught these days is any more relevant to industry than it was in my day, but students don’t get laughed at (at least not to their face) and there is more engagement.
What could universities teach that is useful in industry? For some subjects the possible subject matter can at least be delineated (e.g., becoming a doctor), while for others a good knowledge of what is currently known about how the universe works and a familiarity with some of the maths involved is the most that can sensibly be covered in three years (when the final job of the student is unknown).
Software development related jobs often prize knowledge of the application domain above knowledge that might be learned on a computing degree, e.g., accounting knowledge when developing software for accounting systems, chemistry knowledge when working on chemical engineering software, and so on. Employers don’t want to employ people who are going to spend all their time working on the kind of issues their computing lecturers have taught them to be concerned about.
Despite the hype, computing does not appear to be as popular as other STEM subjects. I don’t see this as a problem.
With universities falling over themselves to award computing degrees to anybody who can pay and is willing to sit around for three years, how can employers separate the wheat from the chaff?
Asking a potential employee to solve a simple coding problem is a remarkably effective filter. By simple, I mean something that can be coded in 10 lines or so (e.g., read in two numbers and print their sum). There is no need to require any knowledge of fancy algorithms, the wheat/chaff division is very sharp.
The secret is to ask them to solve the problem in their head and then speak the code (or, more often than not, say it as the solution is coded in their head, with the usual edits, etc).
Telepathic communication with a Supreme Being
Every year the Christmas cards I receive are a reminder of how seriously a surprisingly large percentage of software developers I know take their beliefs in a Supreme Being.
Surely anybody possessing the skills needed to do well in software engineering would have little trouble uncovering for themselves the significant inconsistencies in any system of beliefs intended to support the existence of a Supreme Being? The evidence from my Christmas card collection shows that some very bright would disagree with me.
This Christmas I have finally been able to come up with some plausible sounding hand waving that leaves me feeling as if I at least have a handle on this previously incomprehensible (to me) behavior.
The insight is to stop considering the Supreme Being question as a problem in logic (i.e., is there a model consistent with belief in a Supreme Being that is also consistent with the known laws of Physics) and start thinking of it was a problem in explaining structure. Love of structure is a key requirement for anybody wanting to get seriously involved with software development (a basic ability to ‘do logic’ is also required, but logic is just another tool and outside of introductory courses and TV shows is vastly overrated).
On the handful of occasions I have spoken to developers about religion (in general I try to avoid this subject, it is just too contentious) things have always boiled down to one of having core belief, a feeling that random is just not a good enough explanation for things being the way they are, while the existence of a Supreme Being slots rather well into their world view.
The human agency detection system has been proposed as one of the reasons for religion; see Scott Atran’s book “In Gods We Trust: The evolutionary landscape of religion” for a fascinating analysis of various cognitive, social and economic factors that create a landscape favoring the existence of some form of religion.
Of course anybody choosing to go with a Supreme Being model has to make significant adjustments to other components of their world view and some of these changes will generate internal inconsistencies. Any developer who has ever been involved in building a large system will have experienced the strange sensation of seeing a system they know to be internally inconsistent function in a fashion that appears perfectly acceptable to everybody involved; listening to users’ views of the system brings more revelations (how could anybody think that was how it worked?) Having had these experiences with insignificantly small systems (compared to the Universe) I can see why some developers might be willing to let slide inconsistencies generated by inserting a Supreme Being into their world view.
I think the reason I don’t have a Supreme Being in my world view is that I am too in love with the experimental method, show me some repeatable experiments and I would be willing to take a Supreme Being more seriously. Perhaps at the end of the day it does all boil down to personal taste.
At the personal level I can see why people are not keen to discuss their telepathic communication sessions (or pray to use one of the nontechnical terms) with their Supreme Being. Having to use a channel having a signal/noise ratio that low must be very frustrating.
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